A Look At The Pardoner

… Essay, Research Paper

A Look at the Pardoner: the Genius of Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300 s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.

The first of these devices, his straightforwardness and matter-of-factness regarding the Pardoner s hypocrisy, is used first to appall his readers, and then to cause them to take a second look at the church in their own society. Chaucer knew that most of his audience lacked the ability to fully understand his views, but he hoped that by using this device he could plant seeds of reason in them that would lead to reform of corruption he saw among church officials like the pardoners. The role of a pardoner in the Medieval Church was to sell indulgences, which granted the buyer pardon for their sins. John Manly, in his book Some New Light on Chaucer, believed that Chaucer developed his negative attitude towards this practice by observing the pardoners of the city Rouncival (127). These pardoners in particular had developed a reputation of being scandalous and full of avarice during the late 1300 s. Chaucer saw this practice of selling indulgences as obviously corrupt, so he therefore sought to make his Pardoner obviously corrupt to his readers.

The Pardoner is very open about his hypocrisy and does not show any sign of remorse for it. In preaching to his audiences his theme is always Radix malorum est cupiditas (Chaucer 1672), which means, greed is the root of all evil. However, he then proudly admits, Avarice is the theme that I employ in all my sermons, to make the people free in giving pennies-especially to me. My mind is fixed on what I stand to win and not at all upon correcting sin. and also boast, By such hornswoggling I ve won, year by year, a hundred marks (1673). The simple fact that a person with such an evil heart, so full of greed, could be successful at accomplishing a duty of the church, makes evident the fact that there must be something morally wrong with that duty itself. Also, the fact that the Pardoner so openly admits his corrupt actions causes the reader to question whether this is not common practice among pardoners.

The second way that Chaucer ingeniously attributed corruption to his Pardoner was though physiognomy. In Chaucer s time there was a well-known science of interpreting a man s character from a study of his features (Duino 322). Certain stereotypes concerning physical features were understood by all people of his time, so Chaucer used these stereotypes as symbolism in his work. The following passage from the general prologue illustrates this well:

This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax and let the ends about his shoulders spread in thin clusters and in his eyes he glittered like a hair

[and] had a voice like a goat s bleat. He was beardless and would never have a beard I think he was a gelding or a mare. (Chaucer 1626-1627)

Chaucer loaded this passage with physiognomy to let his readers know what type of man this pardoner was. First, the long thin yellow hair and high-pitched voice were symbols of a lack of manhood (Duino 322). Second, the wide glittering eyes were a symbol of shamelessness and pride. Thirdly, the fact that he had no facial hair not only was a symbol of a lack of manhood, but was also a symbol of sly cleverness (323). The last line of this passage is probably the most intriguing of them all. It suggests that the pardoner was a eunuch (someone who has either had hi